In today's information age it is typical for computers to be internetworked over a communication network. Communication networks utilize many data forwarding devices (e.g., routers and switches) to forward data messages (also referred to herein as packets) within the communication network. A router acts as a gateway between two or more network segments, and processes packets according to addressing information contained in the packets. Among other things, such forwarding devices include both routing software and a corresponding routing hardware platform that cooperate to forward packets to their appropriate destinations.
FIG. 1 shows a communication system including a number of routers. The communication system includes edge routers (ER1 (102), ER2 (106), ER3 (108), ER4 (110)) and routers R1 (104) and R2 (104) within Network A (112) and routers R3 (104) and R4 (104) within Network B (114). An edge router, such as ER1 (102), routes data between local networks, such as Network A (112) and Network B (114) and to the routers within particular networks. Typically, data packets are routed through a communication network using a networking protocol such as the Internet Protocol (IP).
When a router (e.g., router ER1 (102)) receives a packet from a particular network segment, the router determines whether to drop the packet, process the packet, or forward the packet. Specifically, the router may drop the packet if the packet is destined for the same network segment from which it was received. The router may forward the packet if the packet is destined for a different network segment. The router may process the packet if the packet is destined for the router itself. In order to forward packets, a router uses a routing protocol, such as Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) or Roufing Information Protocol (RIP), to determine network routes and uses the network routes to build and maintain a forwarding table. The forwarding table includes forwarding entries mapping each destination address to a corresponding router interface based upon the network routes. Alternatively, packets of information may be routed using a label switching protocol such as multiprotocol label switching (MPLS). Label switching allows a packet to be transported across a network domain using labels rather than the network layer address.
Often when processing routes in a communication network, bottlenecks may occur at a router or routers within the network due to limited resources. For example, when only one processor in a device is used for multiple routing tasks, the processor spends a significant portion of time waiting on other tasks. The exponential growth of today's communication networks (e.g., the Internet) demands scalability beyond what current architectures are able to sustain. Routers often become obsolete prematurely because they are unable to handle the growth of the Internet. Network management complexity is holding up mass deployment of networking products. The tolerance for downtime due to hardware and software upgrades may be very expensive. Software solutions can become very complicated and are difficult to manage as the performance needs of the routing device grow.